Interview: Hot Chelle Rae

Leah Collins, Dose.ca01.27.2012

Hot Chelle Rae's Ryan Follese and Nash Overstreet don't mind doing it for the kids. The "Tonight Tonight" hitmakers dish on why having a super-loyal fanbase is so not, like, Whatever.Sony Music
/ Sony Music

Hot Chelle Rae accept their American Music Award for best new artist in November 2011.Getty Images
/ Getty Images

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When dozens of kids are willing to wait all day in the cold for you, that’s definitely not, like, Whatever.

Don’t Hot Chelle Rae know it. The pop-rock band -- Nashville natives Nash Overstreet, brothers Ryan and Jamie Follese and Ian Keaggy -- have various claims to pop stardom: they nabbed an American Music Award for best new artist last fall, they played New Year’s Rockin’ Eve -- they’re BFFs with Taylor Swift (the group joins Swift in Australia this March, in between legs of their Beautiful Freaks tour of North America).

Last fall, though, frontman Ryan “RK” Follese and guitarist Overstreet were still acclimatizing themselves to the idea of fame -- never mind people buying tickets to see them.

October 16, the young band was booked to play Toronto. It wasn’t their first time in the city -- but that tour stop was arguably more noticeable than the last. (Disclosure: I noticed it, at any rate. There were teens camped outside the venue -- sparkly posters in tow -- for hours before showtime.)

“Toronto -- when we played the Opera House -- that was one of our first headlining shows,” Overstreet says. (He and Follese are back in the city, doing interviews from a Distillery District club before a MuchMusic appearance later in the day. ) “It was one of the first moments where, ‘WOW. People are here to see us, and not just because they came to see another band.’

“I mean, two years ago, much less six years ago, we were playing, opening up for people and hoping they would come on time to see us -- and, you know, not be talking while we’re playing. And now we’re playing and kids are lining up at noon.”

The summer of 2011, Hot Chelle Rae had also been on the road -- “we really haven’t stopped all of the 2011 year,” says Overstreet. There had been supporting dates with We The Kings, The Script. They’d also charted a break-through hit, “Tonight Tonight.” A contender for 2011’s Song of the Summer, the tune went platinum here in Canada, double-platinum in the U.S. To our knowledge, it’s the only hit single to make a lyric out of “Zach Galifianakis.” They’d also cultivated a sizable fanbase -- the sort that doesn’t just buy concert tickets. (They also write fan fiction, and poetry about the first time “RK” Retweeted them.)

They’re also, often, very young. Significantly younger than anyone in Hot Chelle Rae, anyway. Follese is 24, Overstreet is 26, and when they formed the band in 2005 (under the name Miracle Drug), high school was still fresh to the foursome. Still, they didn’t have the cover of Bop Magazine in their sights.

“Initially, seven years ago, we were shooting for a fanbase that was our age or even older,” says Overstreet. Growing up, each band member was surrounded by music -- perhaps more than the average kid in Nashville, even if they do call it Music City. The Folleses’ parents, Keith and Adrienne, are country songwriters (perhaps you’ve heard Faith Hill’s “The Way You Love Me?”). The same goes for Overstreet’s dad (the much-covered “When You Say Nothing At All” features his songwriting credit). Bass player Ian Keaggy’s father, Phil Keaggy, is a Grammy-nominated guitarist. But early Hot Chelle Rae band practices were like any other, Overstreet and Follese recall: several hours working on songs, followed by time on the computer, spamming people with “Hey, check out our music!” messages on MySpace.

“We were that annoying band,” Follese remembers. “It just didn’t work.” The fanbase only grew once they had the right sound. “It’s about the songs, and about touching people with them, and then that translates to people following you,” says Overstreet.

And when you know that the people listening to your songs are of a certain age, it can change the way you approach things. Ever so slightly.

For one, it’s inspiring. “The most passionate fans, the ones that are not worried about being cool, and not worried about what other people are going to think -- that are just no-holds-barred in love with music -- are the younger kids,” says Overstreet. “Seeing them screaming non-stop is so cool, and it fuels us and keeps us going.”

And when Hot Chelle Rae began work on their second album, Whatever (released last November), Follese says that he knew he already had a grade-school fanbase. “It does factor in,” he says, talking about songwriting with those kids in mind. (The band worked with a variety of co-writers on the disc, including producers Andrew Goldstein, Alexei Misoul, Dan Book, among others.) “You do keep a song or a lyric from going too far,” Follese says, Overstreet nodding in agreement, “or one step over the line, because you do have young kids singing your stuff.”

There are no rules, per se -- though Overstreet says they always work “not to have the parental guidance label” on their records. “It might alienate a certain audience,” says Follese. “We want to have a mass appeal,” Overstreet adds.

“I mean, there are some songs of ours with some swear words in them,” says Overstreet. (There’s a mild S-bomb in “Beautiful Freaks,” for instance, their current tour’s namesake and one of the band’s many songs about partying, good times, et cetera). “But those songs may have originally have had twice as many,” he laughs.

“We’re always trying to figure out how to meet in the middle and stay true to ourselves…”

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